[Video] Why did J20DX fail?

Remember the J20DX non-DXpedition from 2019?
Want to hear exactly what happened from the comfort and safety of your shack whilst on Covid-19 lockdown?

In conjunction with GM6NX and DX-World.net, on June 9th (Tuesday) all J20DX team members (EA3NT, MM0NDX & MM0OKG) will livestream to the GM6NX YouTube channel giving the finer details they encountered on this nightmare trip. Although the DXpedition never happened there’s still an interesting story to tell, so this will be an open and honest account of their woes as well as a tour through some photos and movies.

Be sure to watch it! Tune in at 19:30 UK time (18:30Z) on June 9th, and view the live presentation, followed by a Q & A session.

8 Comments

Gert - PA2LO on June 10, 2020 at 8:20 pm

Thanks for sharing the story.

Happier to be one of the lucky ones making it into the log of J20NT.

Johan ZS1A on June 10, 2020 at 4:47 pm

I really enjoyed watching this. As an x-diplomat I have seen it all. Welcome to Africa ! It is not for beginners, not that you are beginners but you are not that experienced in Africa.
But I had so many times experienced the disappointments of Africa, that I lost count. That disappointments are from the people only. I have spend a few weeks in jail in Nigeria and Angola as a diplomat and had many time looked down the barrel of an AK 47.
It must have been very frustrating though.
But there is always a next time. Sometimes …and just sometimes it all comes together and works out.
Thanks for going through all the trouble and hardship to bring us some nice DX.
ZS1A

Paul VK4MA on June 10, 2020 at 11:35 am

Thanks Col, frustrating and disappointing for sure.

Col MM0NDX on June 10, 2020 at 8:42 am

One of the first things we did when deciding on J2, as you would with any DXpedition planning actually, was to email any locals, in this case J28PJ. Numerous emails. No replies. It wasn’t until we hit difficulties there that a third party managed to put us in touch with him but even then no meaningful help, if any. 73 Col

Paul VK4MA on June 10, 2020 at 8:09 am

Hello Col
Enjoyed the story here.
Did you try and contact j28pj before starting out on your journey or only when the wheels started falling off?
Cheers
Paul – vk4ma

Vladimir Bykov UA4WHX on June 9, 2020 at 9:45 pm

Enjoyed listening to that. Reminded me of my being there as J20VB when I was staying at the Somali area of the capital and the head of the Telecom (being relative to the Prime Minister there) had to come to release me from the Immigration on my come-back from Somaliland. The whole thing is a factor of being a major military playground for the US and the French. Got a few pictures of the QSLs of that time, Perhaps, they can be posted as well.

TOM WYLIE on June 1, 2020 at 6:16 pm

Stupid question really, but if you used your phone for GPS, could you not use the same phone to phone for help? I mean you did buy a local sim card????

david flack ah6hy on May 29, 2020 at 8:14 am

Hope you’ll be archiving this so people will have a chance to watch it later since I am very interested but won’t be able to watch it live. I visited Djibouti and Moucha Island last year — as a tourist not a DXpedition — and we also had a pretty scary experience getting there and back. Boats are not seaworthy. Our engine died on the way there but we managed to make landfall. On the way back it died again and we began to drift, none of the crew had thought to bring a cell phone or sat phone, so we had no way of contacting anyone. Our “captain” resorted to waving his T-shirt around furiously at a tanker on the horizon, which was a waste of time. We were using our phone’s GPS to calculate where we were and how many miles it was to shore and whether we should swim for it because we were so afraid of being swept out to the open ocean. In the end, we were saved by the engine miraculously restarting, but it’s scary to think what the alternative could have been.